Friday, September 22, 2017

COULD THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT WIN OVER THE ALT-RIGH?

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Roy Moore -- soon to be the junior senator from Alabama -- really loves God:

Controversial former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore warned that America was falling apart because of things like transgender troops in the military.

“Our foundation has been shaken. Crime, corruption, immorality, abortion, sodomy, sexual perversion sweep our land. When we become one nation under God again, when liberty and justice for all reigns across our land, we will be truly good again,” he said in his first and only one-on-one debate against appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL).

The comments came shortly after he said he wanted to free the country and military from “political correctness and social experimentation like transgender troops in our bathrooms.”

The man most likely to be Alabama’s next senator told his supporters late last week that rape, murder and child abuse are on the rise — and are so because of Americans’ lack of faith....

Moore later read one of his poems — about how America is falling apart.

Some choice lines:

“Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand.”

“We’ve voted in governments that are rotting to the core,
Appointing Godless judges who throw reason out the door.
Too soft to put a killer in a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill that child before he leaves the womb.

You think that God’s not angry, that our land’s a moral slum?
How much longer will it be before His judgment comes?”

We've been told that the new right doesn't have much use for the Christian right, but at Breitbart, John Nolte is lavishing praise on Moore:

Time and again, I heard people say of Trump, I don’t agree with everything he says, but I’m damn glad he is saying it.

That statement reveals a key part of Trump’s appeal. Even those who were not completely onboard with him policy-wise or with the Birther stuff, they still understood that Trump was freeing our society, breaking the despotic chains of political correctness, making it okay to not whisper....

Which brings me to outsider U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is like a Super Trump in this respect, a place for all that energy to go if you want to continue Making the First Amendment Great Again.

While I may not agree with everything Moore has said or done ... Moore is a walking-talking iconoclast, a swaggering symbol of True Americanism (if you believe “True Americanism” means being allowed to be who you want to be). Moore is a Super Trump in the vanguard against this encroaching fascism that our wannabe oppressors veil as sensitivity and correctness.

How can you not love that this guy said to a left-wing Washington Post reporter, “Sodomy is against the laws of nature”?

Or that he expresses his religious beliefs so unapologetically, “You think that God’s not angry that this land is a moral slum. How much longer will it be before his judgment comes?”

Or that he is basically running on this platform: “We have forgotten the source of our rights” ... “We put ourselves above God. And in so doing, we forgot the basic source of our morality.”

If you want to be a U.S. senator, you are not supposed to say those things.

But he is saying what you are not supposed to say, and whether or not you agree, until Roy Moore attempts to encroach on your beliefs and freedoms, we should all celebrate his strident violation of these tyrannical things we call norms.

So it doesn't matter whether you agree with him on everything (or anything, I suppose) -- he's politically incorrect and that induces liberal tears, so go Roy!

Yes, I know: Steve Bannon has ordered wall-to-wall pro-Moore coverage at Breitbart, and Nolte is just giving the boss what he wants. But still: Nolte called Moore a "Super Trump"! Twice!

Couldn't the religious right's message make a comeback among Breitbart-style alt-rightists? The alt-right wants white Christians to rule America -- isn't that compatible with the Christian right's support for theocracy in America? Many alt-rightists believe in "men's rights," which means they believe most women are evil sluts who ill-advisedly refuse to sleep with them. Isn't the Christian conservative message compatible with at least some of that? Alt-rightists believe that non-whites and non-Christians are gaining power in America in part because of declining white Christian birthrates. Couldn't they find common ground on that with the Christian right? Couldn't they agree that tolerance of abortion, homosexuality, and nontraditional views of gender among white non-conservatives is a big part of that problem?

The religious right politicians with national reputations -- Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum -- don't have much swagger. I wonder whether a cocksure, self-important religious rightist -- a Christian conservative Trump, I guess -- could win over the alt-right.